Spinning Out on Netflix gets figure skating wrong, but Johnny Weir right

Netflix’s Spinning Out is a wildly melodramatic mess in all the best, most entertaining ways. That’s probably what made 2008 World bronze medalist Johnny Weir perfect for the series, in spite of everything it gets wrong about figure skating.

When the trailer for Netflix’s Spinning Out first dropped, it was obvious that, if no one else, figure skating lovers would be tuning in. The promotional material promised plenty of drama. The series is centered around a skater who had suffered a terrifying injury and was hoping to work past her trauma to restart her career.

“Finally! A show for figure skating lovers,” many probably thought, right up until the bizarre twist: Kat Baker, the main character, was to push past her fear of jumping by…switching to pairs.

Ask Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison how much safer pairs skating is than singles. Or, if you’d like, check in with any number of other athletes mentioned in the Los Angeles Times’ 1998 article that described pairs as “demolition derby on ice.” Spoiler alert: Figure skating as a whole has only become more dangerous since that time.

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In spite of the clear flaw in the premise, Spinning Out was still on the binge list for plenty of lifetime—and more recent—fans of the sport, yours truly included. After all, figure skating has always been a sport rife with scandal, so why not capitalize on that for pure entertainment value? And pairs skating, in particular, was known for its 2002 judging scandal, which caused a radical change in figure skating’s judging system as a whole.

Unfortunately, watching the series became more  of a “spot the hilarious error” quest than any kind of enjoyable following of what could have been a great redemption arc for Kaya Scodelario’s Kat. Forget that, for a skater who was afraid of jumps, ice dance would’ve been the better switch, especially when Kat’s short program costume made her look like a dollar store version of Olympic gold medalist Tessa Virtue. There were bigger problems here.

Kat is supposed to be an “up-and-coming, high-level skater.” That’s all fine and good for the series, until it turns out that Spinning Out‘s central character is 21 years old. That age and “up-and-coming,” unfortunately, do not jive in figure skating.

Ashley Wagner’s World silver medal win at age 24 was the exception, not the rule, and as the star told the Los Angeles Times:

"I think it’s a youth-obsessed culture within skating and it’s because we have kind of let it become that. And I don’t think that there is enough importance placed on maturity on the ice."

As unbelievable as Kat’s switch to pairs was, adding this new layer of misrepresentation to Spinning Out made it clear that any remotely accurate depiction of figure skating, beyond its reputation for melodrama and outlandish costumes, wasn’t happening. Throw in some attempts at examining all sorts of big issues—like mental illness, a forbidden Russian lesbian love story, and racism—and Netflix’s skating series made even the most wild television look tame. There’s just so much happening.

Weirdly, that’s what works best about Spinning Out is its guilty-pleasure, trainwreck of absurdity. It’s pure entertainment for entertainment’s sake, in spite of any attempts at making it anything else.

Or, well, the crazy of it all was the second best thing about Spinning Out. The best? Johnny Weir. No, really. Somehow, the series both serves to highlight everything unique about the self-described diva, who has finally been able to embrace his drama queen roots since retiring from competitive skating and switching to commentary.

When Weir first appears in Spinning Out as one half of Kat and Justin’s rival team, it’s difficult to tell whether or not he’s a spectacular actor. It’s possible he’s just appearing as “Johnny Weir under code name ‘Gabe.'” His hair and wardrobe are basically at “Johnny on interacting-with-normals” level; and the personality is in about the same place.

If Weir seems to have brought his own hair and makeup to the series, then he also brought his former coach’s fur coat and haircut with him, as well. In Spinning Out, the Dasha character seems eerily reminiscent of Galina Zmievskaya—if perhaps far more upbeat than skating fans have been made to believe former-Soviet personalities in sports are.

And yes: Thankfully, we get to see “Gabe” skate. The skating might not occur frequently enough, and it might not be in the competitions we’d expect, but we’ll take it.

While best known for his singles career, Weir also had experience in the pairs discipline. On the rare occasion when he’s seen actually skating in Spinning Out, it’s obvious that his natural talent in the sport hasn’t diminished, whether or not he’s with a partner. In a series full of the very obvious use of skating doubles and awkwardly bad skating programs that cause one to wonder if this is truly how outsiders see the sport, getting a chance to glimpse Johnny’s on-ice movement is a breath of fresh air.

Somehow, through its flaws, Spinning Out manages to make Weir’s character look like one of the few normal ones. And maybe he really is. After all, in a sport capable of destroying athletes’ body image (or, at the very least, exacerbating underlying issues) and covering up sexual abuse, why shouldn’t a personality like Weir’s be normalized?

The talent Johnny Weir brought to figure skating was, quite frequently, overshadowed by his antics. In his first trip to the Olympics in 2006, he created a scandal by wearing a Russian jacket to practices. It didn’t help his image any when, at the same competition, he famously succombed to nerves in the free skate, dropping to fifth after having won the short program.

Spinning Out certainly had more than a fair dose of skaters on top, suddenly losing it all because their minds and/or broken-down bodies weren’t in the right place. From Kat’s bipolar episode nearly costing her a chance to compete, to her sister’s on-ice breakdown after learning her boyfriend/doctor had been using her for sex—rather than part of a real relationship where he was the only one there for her—the mental aspect of skating that once let Weir down was well presented.

Whether that was in homage to Weir himself or countless others, though, is anyone’s guess. Regardless, here’s hoping that, should Netflix’s Spinning Out get a second season, it will lean on the skater/actor for advice on how to best mix the melodramatic side of skating with something a bit more authentic.

After all, he’s always been nothing if not genuinely, unapologetically himself. Why shouldn’t a show about figure skating include that message, over all others, in its choreography?

Make sure to stream Spinning Out on Netflix. When you’re done with your binge, come share all your thoughts on the socks-over-boots of it all!